The Windermere

400 West 57th Street at Ninth Avenue

10/23/2007 02:05 PM
The Windermere

The Windermere, a brooding 19th-century ghost rotting on some of the
city's most valuable real-estate, is the oldest-known large apartment complex
remaining from one of Manhattan's first apartment-house districts. As its
appearance would suggest, it represents both a glorious past and a terrifying,
almost unbelievable descent into landlord/tenant-relationship hell.
It's crumbling walls tell a truly sordid tale of vidictive greed, irrational
tenaciousness and unintended consequence.

It all began promisingly enough in 1879 when three young men bought this
12,500 square foot plot for $39,000 (in what was then a fairly barren area)
with hopes of becoming rich as land speculators. They hired architect
Theophilus G. Smith and the resulting seven-story, three-winged luxury building
opened in 1881 with 39 five- or six-bedroom apartments with marble fireplaces, hazelwood molding,
parquet floors, hydraulic elevators and telephone service (the city had gotten
its first exchange only two years earlier).
The exterior design combined stylistic features of Queen Anne, High Victorian Gothic
(polychromatic brick and horizontal banding), and Romanesque (round-arched windows and
cornices). The most notable exterior features are the three-story bowed oriels
and the use of contrasting Ohio stone trim and channeled brick pilasters that
corbel at the cornices. The building's name may have been inspired by Lake Windermere in England.

Pioneers are the ones with the arrows in their backs and the building was soon
eclipsed by the Chelsea Hotel (1883), The Dakota (1884), and the Osborne (1885).
As the wealthy clientele was siphoned off to these taller, more opulent buildings,
the Windemere became a pioneering home for the emerging demographic of
unmarried, financially-independent women created by employment opportunities in the city.
Residents were grouped into the multi-room apartments, sharing a bathroom
and kitchen but essentially remaining independent of each other. Because of the
modern quality of its design, it was more attractive to these "New Women"
than the typical boarding house of the time. By the late 1890s, 80% of the building's
200 residents were women and the unconventional quality of the building also attracted
artists and performers. But with the opening of subway lines in the early 20th century,
Hell's Kitchen began losing population as tenants were drawn to attractive new apartment
houses in northern Manhattan and the Windemere's resident mix became more balanced.

The building's descent into the abyss began with demographic changes in the city in the
late 1960s and 1970s as drug dealers and prostitutes joined the artists, actors
and musicians in the Windermere. By 1980, the building was only about half full
and the remaining residents who refused financial incentives to vacate were
burgled, assaulted and threatened with death. The harrassment culminated in
conspiracy convictions against the building agent, manager and superintendent in 1985.

When Toa Construction bought the building in 1986, only a handful of residents remained,
protected from eviction by housing laws but trapped in a building that was intentionally
undermaintained for the next two decades. A rent strike begun in the early 1980s
dragged into the 21st century because Toa never provided the tenants with an address where
they could mail their rent. The building received
landmark designation in 2005 but the aging Japanese landlord continued to
sit on the decrepit property, stubbornly awaiting the death or departure of
the last holdouts. In an especially bizzare turn of events in 2006,
an appeals court prevented the eviction of a mentally ill tenant
who retained a $104/month room in the building while spending most of his
nights sleeping in Central Park.